The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory: Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984

This book deserves our admiration for its masterly review of historical events in the development of psychoanalysis. It should be read by psychoanalysts not only for its enormous fund of skillfully assembled information about the formative years of Freud's thinking, but for its story of how new information was treated by some leaders of the psychoanalytic establishment. In the guise of protecting psychoanalysis, this information was dismissed as harmful. It is precisely such a well-meaning upholding of psychoanalytic doctrine that can throttle its growth. This is not to say that I agree with Masson's interpretations of Freud's behavior about the seduction theory, nor do I agree with Masson's estimate of the ultimate significance of the events he details. Although some of Masson's interpretations are made in the best Freudian style, this reader remains unconvinced that, in what Masson calls a “failure of courage,” Freud suppressed the truth. Nor did Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory lead to the present-day “sterility” of psychoanalysis, as Masson believes. Rather, the spurious need to defend psychoanalysis that Masson encountered during his investigations has also made many institutes sterile places. Masson thus confounds the limitations of some parts of the psychoanalytic establishment with the future of psychoanalysis itself. In many areas, especially in psychology, however, psychoanalysis is alive and